Under a Spell

Chapter Sixteen

Other than navigating from the printed sheet Will handed me, Will and I didn’t speak for the entire car ride over to Bud Hastings’s Fillmore-area apartment. My whole body was humming by the time we entered the vestibule. My mind was on a constant spin cycle trying scenarios and considering locations. Will was energized and as chipper as a robin. He buzzed number seventy-four and we both waited, silently.

No answer.

Another buzz—this time Will mashed his index finger against the buzzer and held it there. Still, no answer.

“Probably because he’s out looking for another girl to attack,” I told him.

Will mashed another button.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Manager.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Centuri, is it? My name is Will Sherman from Scotland Yard and I’m afraid we need to get into apartment seventy-four, currently rented by a gentleman by the name of William ‘Bud’ Hastings?”

Mr. Centuri launched into a significant series of horrible-sounding coughs, further cementing my desire to never, ever take up smoking.

“Scotland Yard?”

“Yes, sir.”

Another cough. “You guys have, uh, what’s that? Jurisdiction out here?”

“I’d be happy to show you my credentials if you’ll just show me into Hastings’s domicile, sir.”

Centuri clicked off the intercom and another series of coughs and labored breathing began, this one coming from the door of the apartment right in front of us. The door snapped open halfway and a squat man built like a fireplug leaned out toward us.

“What’d you say your name was, again?”

“Holmes, Doctor, and this is my associate Mrs. Malaprop.”

Centuri’s beady eyes scanned me suspiciously and I broke into a polite smile and a heavily accented, “Good evening, fine sir.”

Will shot me a look, but it went right over Centuri’s head as he apparently assumed Will’s credentials were in my bra.

“Bud in some kind of trouble?” Centuri asked my tits.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Will said, his English sharp and clipped.

“He’s a good tenant. Always pays his rent on time, never been no kind of problem. On vacation or something right now.”

“The key, sir?”

“Yeah.” Centuri disappeared into his apartment and reappeared with a single key pinched between forefinger and thumb.

“Aren’t you going to escort us?”

Centuri waved a handful of Vienna sausage fingers through the air. “Eh, you’re cops. Jeopardy’s on. Just lock up after yourself and give a knock when you’re leaving. Drop the key through my mail slot.”

“Brilliant.”

“Pip, pip,” I put in.

“Pip, pip?” Will asked, once Centuri shut his door.

“I was playing a part. Trying to make it believable.”

“Thanks for going to the trouble, but I don’t think our landlord there is going to mull too much over.”

“He could. He asked you your name and about Scotland Yard.”

“And he bought that I was first Will Sherman and then Dr. Holmes and that you were a wily English woman from a Sheridan play.”

“Hence the pip, pip.”

“This one’s seventy-four.”

Will knocked. “Mr. Hastings? This is Dr. Holmes from Scotland Yard. Please open up.”

I crossed my arms and cocked out a hip. “You’re really digging the Scotland Yard thing, aren’t you?”

“Pip, pip,” Will said over her shoulder as he sunk the key into the lock.

I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling my eyes widen. “Oh my God.”

“What? Looks like a regular ol’ place to me.”

I pumped my head. “I know. Regular. No to-the-ceiling collections of doll heads or empty terrariums. There’s a couch and a coffee table and an old television set.”

“I don’t want you to bust through your knickers, but there’s a kitchen table and a refrigerator, too. Even a newspaper.” He swiped the paper from the table and waggled it at me. “Yesterday’s.”

I poked around the living room as Will checked out the kitchen. “So, this guy seems awfully regular. He’s got milk in the fridge. Some take-out that looks like it’s from—” Will reached into and pulled out a Styrofoam carton. He popped it open. “Ugh, 1974. Nothing crazy. No disembodied heads or anything like that. Does that mean he’s not our kidnapper?”

“No, no, not at all. What do people always say when they interview the neighbors of a serial killer?”

“He had a shrunken head in the linen closet?”

I snorted. “No. They say, ‘He was just a regular guy.’” I picked up a magazine and flipped through it. “Or they say, ‘He kept to himself, mostly.’ Find anything interesting?”

Will turned around and handed me a framed photograph.

“Well, I’ll be.”

“The geezer from the front office.”

“Heddy is not a geezer,” I said, pulling the frame open and sliding the picture out. “Nothing special about this picture. Looks like it was taken at school, pretty recently. Not that Heddy changes much.”

“So we’ve got Janitor Bud in an affair with the school secretary. If they weren’t both a thousand years old, it would almost be sexy.”

I rolled my eyes and tapped the glass. “Do you think Heddy knows about Bud’s . . . side activity?”

“Whoa, love, we haven’t found a single thing here that indicts Bud as our kidnapper, other than his incriminating normalness.”

“But, Miranda!”

“But Miranda nothing. We’ve broken into a regular guy’s regular old apartment. Other than a fetish for the office bird, nothing is incriminating. Nothing is even slightly out of the ordinary.”

I put my hands on my hips and swung my head. “No, there’s something here. Something that we’re missing. I can feel it. Look for methods of restraint—duct tape, handcuffs, zip ties.”

Will waggled his brows and grinned. “Ooh, kinky. I didn’t really fancy a shag, but okay, I’ll go with it.”

“I mean things that Bud may have used to restrain the girls, you sicko. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

I heard Will step into the bathroom and pull open the medicine cabinet. “No knockout drugs or Viagra, nothing like that.”

“Keep looking. Bud can’t be that smart. We should also be looking for any evidence of a secondary hiding place. There’s no way he could be keeping Alyssa in here without his neighbors knowing about it. She’s got to be somewhere else. See if you can find a storage container receipt or hotel matches or something. Bud’s our guy, Will, I can feel it. We’ll gather everything we can here and send Alex and the PD in for the kill.”

“You mean, if we can find Bud.”

“We will.”

My chest was feeling light and the blood pulsing through my veins shot a new, hopeful energy through me. We were going to track Bud down. We were going to find Alyssa. And, God as my witness, we were going to find her alive.

I found Bud’s bedroom at the back of the apartment. It was a simple as the rest of the place—a full-sized bed, a bureau, a television set that was probably brand new in 1957, and a single shelf lined with books.

“Bingo.”

Will came up over my left shoulder. “Bingo, what?”

I pointed to the shelf.

“Mystery buff.” A pause. “Oh. That’s different.” He reached over and slid a slim volume from the shelf. “The History of Witchcraft.”

I slid the rest of the questionable books into my hand. “Coven and Craft. The Twenty-first Century Witch. Incantations and Spells.” I paused, holding the last book up. “And the coup de grace.”

“The book of protection spells.”

“Still don’t think Bud is our man?”

“All right, all right.” Will nodded. “I don’t think the books are definitive, but it certainly puts ol’ Bud in the running.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “So, ol’ Bud lures the girls into his car, brings them—somewhere—strangles them, does the carving and reads from his little spell books here? What was he trying to accomplish?”

“Well, let’s see.” I pulled Incantations and Spells book from the stack and began thumbing through it.

“Hm.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just thought that a spell book for a guy like Bud would be a bit more worn, is all.”

I turned the book over in my hand, checking the spine, then flipping a few more pristine pages. “Well, Lorraine said we were dealing with someone very powerful. Maybe he didn’t use this much because he didn’t need it. It does seem pretty simple for someone so advanced.”

“So our guy is an all-powerful wizard?”

“No, a wizard is something totally separate.”

“Ah, warlock then.”

“No!” I shook my head in a panic, then dropped my voice as though Janitor-Witch Bud would suddenly materialize and turn us into toads or Kardashians. “No, male witches are just called witches. The whole warlock thing? Bad form. It’s an insult. Literally means ‘oath breaker.’”

Will nodded, impressed. “You know a lot about it.”

“You tend to learn quickly when you call Lorraine’s Christmas party date a warlock and he repeatedly dunks you in the punch bowl.”

“Sounds like a lovely fellow.”

“I had a piece of pineapple lodged in my ear until New Year’s. Come on, let’s see what else we can find.”

We worked in companionable silence until Will pulled out the bottom drawer of Bud’s bureau. “I suppose there could be some truth to your theory.”

I rushed over and gawked. Will had last year’s yearbook spread out on his lap. The spine was broken down the center from heavy use, the book flopping open to a photograph of Cathy Ledwith. The smiling, black and white photo was circled in black, but there was a heavy red slash through it. A date was written in the same black ink.

“Oh.” My hackles went up and fear, like an icy breeze, shot down my spine. “That’s the day Cathy went missing.”

“You mean the day she was found.”

“No. When she went missing.”

Will turned a page; two newspaper clippings were carefully folded and pinched in the crease. I didn’t need to open them to know they were from the day Cathy disappeared and the day she was found.

“Trophies?” Will said grimly.

“Could be. What about these?”

Four loose photos were tucked in the back of the book. They were each the standard, posed picture-day photos—bright smiles, heads cocked, fuzzy blue background, Mercy uniforms pressed and impeccable. “Fallon, Alyssa, Kayleigh, Miranda,” I said, as I flipped through each shot. “It’s like a roadmap.”

“Or a catalog.” Will took the photos from me and laid Alyssa’s and Kayleigh’s out on the bed. “He’s got these two.” He picked up Fallon’s photo and eyed me. “Still think they’re partners?”

I swallowed hard. “I—I don’t know.”

Will placed the photo next to Miranda’s. “Then I guess we need to figure out which one of these he is after now.”

I waited outside while Will handed Bud’s key over to Centuri. He hadn’t been gone for a minute when I snatched my phone and hit the speed dial.

“Grace.”

“Why didn’t you tell me another girl has gone missing? Why didn’t you tell me it was Kayleigh Logan?”

I heard Alex suck in a breath just as Will stepped out to meet me. Will’s eyes raked over me as I stood there with the phone pressed against my ear. Suddenly, his lips were pressed in a thin, sharp line and I knew he wasn’t happy. From the sound of Alex’s sharp breathing, it was apparent that he wasn’t, either.

“Did Sampson tell you about Kayleigh?”

“Of course he did. You and me and Will are supposed to be working together on this, Alex. How are we supposed to do that if we’re not sharing information?”

“Actually, Lawson, me and Romero are working on this case. I don’t know what you and Will are doing, and frankly, I don’t care. I’ve got two missing girls to find.”

I could hear him pull the phone away from his ear and something inside me swelled and broke. “Bud Hastings.”

He paused. “What?”

“You need to be looking for Bud Hastings. He’s the janitor at Mercy.”

I could hear the sound of shuffling paper on Alex’s side. “We interviewed him. He’s got an alibi for the time Alyssa went missing. And, actually, for Kayleigh’s, too. He’s on sabbatical. So thanks, but—”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where did Bud Hastings go on his sabbatical? Do you know? Because Will and I are at his apartment right now and Bud’s not here, but pictures of four teenage girls are—and two of them have gone missing.”

“Lawson.” I could tell Alex was gritting his teeth by the tight, stiff way he said my name. “We’re handling it.”

“Not well enough, you’re not.”

I hung up the phone and jammed it in my pocket while Will stared at me for a moment of stunned silence. Slowly, a sly, impressed grin slid over his face.

“For some reason, I’m incredibly attracted to you right now.”

I wanted to grin despite our dire circumstances. My pants also seemed to have no conscience as I felt the desperate need to take them off.

“No,” I said as much to Will as to myself. “We’re getting Alyssa and Kayleigh back. Then we’re stringing up Bud by his sicko neck.”

“I don’t understand why he’d take another girl right now.”

I pointed upward. The moon was hanging low over the bay, an enormous silvery orb half sliced by the night. “That’s why.”

Will’s gaze followed mine and he let out a low whistle. “The seventh day of the moon cycle.”

I gaped. “What?”

Will pointed. “The moon is half full on the seventh day of the moon cycle.”

My insides went to liquid. “The seventh day. He wasn’t holding the girls for seven days, he was waiting for the seventh day of the moon cycle.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It means that Alyssa and Kayleigh are running out of time.”

“Can’t you go any faster?” I growled as Nigella huffed her way through town.

“First of all, we’re going fast enough. And second of all, we don’t even know where Bud is.”

“But we do know that Miranda is in danger. Whatever Bud us going to do, he’s going to do tonight. Go, Will!”

My heart was banging through my rib cage by the time we turned the corner. I had the car door open and my feet on the ground before Nigella sputtered to a full stop. Everything inside me was firecrackers as I listened to the soles of my shoes slap the concrete, then take the inside stairs two at a time.

“Miranda! Miranda!” I was huffing and out of breath by the time I crested the third-floor landing; I could feel the heat well in my cheeks as I gasped.

“Oh my God,” Nina said, flinging the door open. She sped out into the hall and crushed me to her, pulling me through the door. “Running for your life?”

“No,” I gasped, doubling over with my hands on my knees. “Just running. Where’s Miranda?”

“She’s with Vlad,” Will said calmly, coming through the front door.

“What?”

He held up his cell phone. “While you were busy on your sprint I called Nina, who told me that Miranda was no longer at the apartment, as she has gone off with Vlad.” He gave the phone a little shake and shot me the most annoyingly self-congratulatory grin I had ever seen.

I swore to myself I would pummel him if I were ever able to catch my breath again. “Okay, so we know Miranda’s safe. Well, safe enough. What now?”

“Fallon.”

I felt instantly guilty for not springing into the same, lung-exploding action over her.

“We’re not entirely sure these girls are in danger right now,” Will said, his expression placating. “I’ll give Fallon’s house a ring, tell her to keep a lookout. You’ve already called Alex and gotten the police department on Bud.”

My stomach burned at the mention of Alex—even more so at the idea of Alex listening to anything I said.

“And then you should take a nap. Yes?”

I started. “Wait, what? A nap?” I said, frowning. “I’m not a child. Why are you treating me like a child? I found the clue that cracked this case wide open.”

Will crossed the living room in two quick strides and gave me a soft pat on the head. “Of course you did.”

“I’m going after Bud. Now.” I took a step forward, but Will caught me and held me a hairsbreadth from him. I was staring into his eyes; I could smell the slight scent of mint on his breath. My heart thumped. My nipples sprung to attention, and I vaguely wondered if I would ever be able to be aroused in circumstances that didn’t include a possible serial criminal or imminent danger.

“Let Alex handle it.”

He gave me a peck on the forehead and sauntered out the door.